Herons at the Neighborhood Pond

Our neighborhood pond is still an eyesore – cleaned out with a bulldozer in late spring, most of the vegetation gone, and covered with algae. But it is full of frogs which can sometimes be spotted if you hear plops as they move through the shallows. It’s made the pond a good place for a green heron which I have seen so frequently that it must be a near permanent resident. I always enjoy photographing green herons because they have so many ‘looks.’ Sometimes they look chunky and not much like a heron. Other times the feathers on top of their head stand almost straight up…a bird with a mohawk! Other times their neck elongates but looks very thick and strange for a heron. But sometimes they hold themselves in a pose that looks like most of the other herons (the very last image in the slide show below.

I spotted a Great Blue Heron in the pond last week. It doesn’t have adult plumage and the bill is two-toned so it probably is one that hatched this spring. It has a white spot under its eye which I noticed in several images; maybe that makes it unique. It found a meal near the pond drain but swallowed it before I could see what it was – maybe a frog…or a small fish.

Even though the pond has no visual appeal on its own, I like the birds that are there!

Zooming – June 2017

I use the zoom on my camera for multiple reasons and I was thinking about that when I selected the pictures from this month’s accumulation. I use the zoom to photography birds and animals that would fly or run away if I got closer. Squirrels fit into that category. This one was exploring the area under the pines in our back yard; I was in my office on the second floor of the house.

The optical zoom on my camera has improved with each new camera over the past few years until now I notice things in the images that are too small to notice with my eyes. Note the hole in the beak of the catbird. It’s a nare (nostril) which leads to nasal cavities in the birds skull.

I also see the changes as birds react to their environment. Take a look at two ‘looks’ of the green heron that is frequenting the pond in our neighborhood.

Sometimes I use the camera almost like binoculars. These structures were in the distance from where I was hiking.

Other times I use the optical zoom to achieve macro-like images….and avoid creating a shadow on my subject (by getting close to it). This day lily petal is a good example.

Other times I can’t get close because the subject is too high or there is a physical barrier. This maple is surrounded by a flower and ground cover bed….and I didn’t want to step on any carefully maintained vegetation.

I tend to use the zoom (both optical than continuing into the digital) frequently and its one of the reasons I use my camera rather than cell phone when I want better images.

New Camera at the Pond

I got a new camera last October before the Festival of the Cranes; Canon came out with a new version already and my husband ordered it immediately – and Cannon Powershot SX730 HS. It has all the features of my previous ones (the 40x optical zoom, for example) plus a screen that is hinged so that it can be angled out from the camera. It will make it easier to take pictures with the camera held lower which is often a better angle for composition. It makes it easier to look through the bottom of my glasses and actually see the screen rather than pushing the glasses down my nose and not used them at all for the screen!

The other new feature that the camera has is Bluetooth pairing with my smart phone to get geo-tagging data (from the phone) in real time to add to the images. I’m still experimenting with it but I think it’s going to work well. I had an older camera that had GPS in the camera itself; since I turn my camera off and on a lot, the time it took the GPS to geo-locate made it almost useless. My phone is on all the time so the location information from it – transmitted via a Bluetooth pairing to the camera – should work better.

My first foray outdoors with the new camera was a short walk down to the neighborhood pond. It is still an eyesore covered with green algae and some trash visible around the margins. As we walked toward it, a red-winged blackbird was making a ruckus perched on a stick in the middle of the pond…then a bigger bird took its place.

Zooming in…I discovered it was a green heron!

It perused the pond then took a hunting stance.

And caught a frog!

A few seconds after gobbling down that meal, it swooped down low over the water and caught something…flew to far bank.

Another frog! The pond may have a huge crop of frogs this year because it has few fish and turtles (to eat the tadpoles)….the heron feasted.